Customer Reviews

Seeing I (Doctor Who Series)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow, what a book! Starting with Sam in a homeless shelter (It's gritty, but good to see a companion live in the Real World for a change); to the Doctor fighting for his sanity in a kinder, gentler prison, this book will rock your socks off by the end.

First of all, THANK GOD Sam gets to grow up!

Secondly, I must admit my skin started to crawl at the description of what is done to the Doctor; how it affects him and the aftermath. Yikes.

Thirdly, the "I" are a very interesting creation. They sound pretty, and yet if you see one you should run as fast as you can (and faster) in the opposite direction.

And ladies, if you are into Hurt/Comfort stories at all, this book is for you. Fans of Sci-Fi will understand this reference. I promise you will ache to hold the poor, battered Doctor in your arms and smother him with love and protection. You get to pick the method of Love and Protection, of course.

All in all, I still say the team of Orman and Blum make a perfect story and understand the heart of the Doctor Who fan intimately. They write the best DW books around!

"Traditional" Doctor Who adventures are fine with me to a certain extent, since that kind of thing is what got us liking the show to begin with but for some reason I tend to expect more from the Eighth Doctor novels, since those are supposed to be continuing the story of the show and I'd rather see it pushing the show into new directions and doing things that we wouldn't necessarily see with serialized episodes and measly budgets and whatnot. For the people who insist on traditional stories, we have the Past Doctor Adventures, which seem to be filling that niche nicely.

Not that I want everything to be experimental and boundary pushing all the time but a little change of pace to show that the writers are at least trying to think outside the box is nice. The risk you generally run with that is you tend to have a tradeoff between "technically dazzling" and "emotionally engaging" where they might impress you with ideas but at the end of the day you really don't care that much about anything that's happened.

Fortunately, with Blum and Orman that isn't as much a problem. Her novels tended to be the highlights of the Virgin line in that she was consistently decent, able to set up scenes nicely and convey actual emotion. Their previous novel for the BBC line "Vampire Science" nearly singlehandedly saved it after the bad tasting "Eight Doctors" and here they go and take a storyline with a dubious goal and bring it to a somewhat satisfying ending.

That storyline is the "Missing Sam" story, where the Doctor and Ms Samantha Jones were separated a few books back and have been kind of trying to find each other ever since. Well, by this point Sam has stopped assuming that she's going to find the Doctor and is just trying to get on with her life in the future. The Doctor, meanwhile, is busy getting captured. The authors do an interesting thing here where the typical "Who" plot of an alien menace and so on is almost an afterthought to the character dramas going on, with chapters alternating between Sam's new life and how she copes with it and the Doctor being stuck in a prison for three years and being unable to get out.

This is where the interesting parts come in. By putting Sam on her own the authors force themselves to turn her into an interesting character and for the most part they succeed. Not completely because they don't have a lot to work with, but for the first time she's not totally annoying or the character equivalent of wallpaper. Exploring in great detail what happens when a companion leaves the Doctor isn't something we've really seen in a lot of, and contrasting her new life with the borderline hilarity of the Doctor being trapped in the friendliest prison ever works better than it should.

Is it typical? No, not really, and I can see why a lot of fans might get ticked with the pages of the Doctor doing nothing, or learning Sam's dating history, but for those of us who like to see different things tried, it's a nice change of pace. And does it work? Yes, strangely enoguh, they keep the book interesting and the plots moving and while all the alien stuff seems a bit thin and rushed, that's not the goal of the book. By the end of it Sam is different and even the Doctor is a little bit different for the experience. Whether future authors will keep the pace remains to be seen but it's nice to know that some of them out there are still trying.

Let's see, the Doctor's companion has to deal with living in one place and time, years pass, the Doctor is imprisoned, and alien insectoids are involved somehow. Now which novel am I talkng about?
A. Set Piece
B. Seeing I
C. All of the above
The answer is C, of course.

That said, I really enjoyed both novels. There was more focus on the Doctor trying to escape this prison, and although it happens several times, it's new and interesting each time. The changes that Sam goes through while trying to carve out a life for herself on an alien world are reminiscient of our own experiences in finding our way as new adults in our own world. This book went really quickly for me, and I was done before I knew it, and wanted more. The Orman/Blum gestalt always produces thoughtful, entertaining, and interesting stories, and this is no exception. Buy it now!

Seeing I was one of the best Dr. Who book I have read in a long time. It shows a side of the Doctor that has not been seen since the 7th Doctor and Ace. It starts out with Sam who is stranded on a strange plant not feeling real sure if she wants to see the Dr. again. What she does not realize is that he is looking for her and will do anything to find her,even if this means finding himself in prision. When the two are reunited Sam has trouble not letting her feeling for him get the better of her. You also see a tender and fragile side of the Dr. that I have not seen in any of the other books I have read (until the 8th Doctor). It has moments in it where for the first time he shows real feeling for one of his companions (Sam) and this is given in return. It has a very good ending (but I will not tell it. You have to read it for yourself. I found the book exciting and had trouble putting it down. I read it ihn two nights (I read before I go to sleep. Read and enjoy.

With SEEING I, we bring to a close the three book DOCTOR WHO mini-series that began with THE LONGEST DAY (which was followed by a solo Doctor intermission in THE LEGACY OF THE DALEKS), and followed by DREAMSTONE MOON - and up until now each story has tried to build on the one previous - but with little luck and even less entertainment. But with SEEING I we end on a high note which not only entertains, but also drops a few plot lines and problems with Sam that had dogged her since she first arrived on board the TRADIS. As for the story, it's a straight forward affair that will at once cause a few yawns, but at the same time open a few eyes (pun intended). The Doctor is still searching for Sam, and now having found her at the opening of the story, he is arrested and locked away for several years while we, the reader, pick up and follow Sam from girl to young woman as she lands without a friend on a distant planet, joins a environmental group, shakes up the place and battles a mega corporation - and all the while is allowed to grow up. I've never been a big fan of the Sam character. She was boring, annoying and her attraction to the Doctor was always a problem for me (and most writers tried to turn her into some kind of "sex object" for the Doctor to notice - see OPTION LOCK for the dreaded wet T-shirt scene), but here, finally, she allowed to grow up, acquire some skills (which she was seriously lacking in the previous novels - unless you consider screaming and running skills), and have a mind of her own. Like the rest of the series though, the fireworks are held back until the final third of the book and it's all rush, rush, rush from there until the last page, leaving the reader with abrupt conclusion to a story which was neither that exciting or surprising to begin with. SEEING I is not for first time readers, but for fans, it's one of the best and worth picking up.

There was one moment while in SEEING I where I cheered out loud. It was the passage in which Sam Jones (having run out on the Doctor in an earlier book) gets fed up with her boring, routine, desk-bound, nine-to-five job and quits to try to make a life for herself that means something. And this portion demonstrates the strength of this book. No longer is Sam merely Generic Companion #1, but a thinking, living, human character who's forced to deal with life after her first series of travels in the TARDIS.

The Doctor is well characterized here, but that isn't surprising as Kate Orman and Jon Blum are the team that gave us the first real characterization of the post-TV-Movie Eighth Doctor. There are a few places where his extreme touch-feeliness may feel a bit shallow and false, but there is something positive to be said about a Doctor who goes bungee jumping in between adventures. The plot is fairly thin and serves mostly to explore the two main characters, Sam and the Eighth Doctor, and their relationship -- something that had not been done as well or as in-depth in this BBC range it had been in some of the Doctor/companion teams of the Virgin-era books. This is something that the series was very much in need of -- in prior books, the Doctor and Sam had become almost faceless, with Paul McGann's one-time portrayal of the Doctor being reduced into small basic mannerisms that captured none of the charm and enthusiasm that had been brought to the role. SEEING I did a wonderful job of giving the Doctor more character than simply repeating his friends' a (not inconsiderable) number of times before addressing them.

All in all, this is an excellent return to form. With far too many of the early BBC books reading like simple churned-out children's books, it's nice to have something that appears to have been thought all the way through. We have an interesting villain in the form of the I, who could have done with a little more face-time. We get to learn a bit more about Sam and we see the authors handle her in a way that doesn't make her seem like the most annoying companion that ever existed. We get a good solid adventure story, and like all of Kate Orman's books, we get to see the Doctor actually going through some suffering during his trials and tribulations. SEEING I definitely left me wanting more.

Though, remarkably, I am actually NOT Jennifer Hopkins Sastokes@bellsouth.net from Macon, I too liked this book. The Doctor REALLY suffers for years in prison!

I can't believe this. Here I am sitting down at my kitchen table reading the customer reviews on a book a that I have just ordered and I must say that this is really amaizing. Is this Doctor Who book really that good? If these other reviewes are anything to go by, it must be. All of them seem to give it a thumbs up.I have also read a summary of the plot in one of the reviewes and I must tell you, that I've been waiting for a Dr. Who book like this for years. I loved all the stories where the Doctor was dragged to edge of sanity and back. You see, I am also a Sci-fi writer, and I writer Doctor Who stories for my own enjoyment, but soon I'll be posting them on my website. If and anyone out there is interested email me at dorothylowther@earthlink.net and I'll set you up. I hope you like them all. It's good to know that my colleagues are doing such a good job with this sieres. I can't wait until I get Seeing I. Kate Orman and her Co-author keep up the good work. Next to Terrance Dicks, you two are the best Doctor Who writers around.

This was a very fast read. The 8th Doctor and Sam work real good together. For the first time you see a side of the Doctor that has never beem seen before. The realtionship between the Doctor and his companion seems to be getting closer so for the first time he is not only thinking of himself he is thinking of others. I look forward to reading more books with this combination. It did not take me long to reasd this book.

This is the first of the "New" Dr. Who stories I have read, meaning the "original" stories that are not part of the series. I have got to say that it is one big soap-opra. Most of the scenes are with Sam on some Earth-like world doing Earth-like stuff. Booring. I read this about two years ago, so can only barely remember the scenes with Dr. Who. Most of the chapters are of Sam and her friends, or Sam and her new boyfriend blah! blah! blah! These books, all of them in my opinion, are like this. I don't know if it's the times(1999, 2000, 2001) or what but I guess people prefer soaps on another planet to adventure on another planet like the series. That is why these books have sold. That is why sci-fi shows today are so mushy(eg. Farscape, Star Trek, probably "Enterprise" released this fall, and Dr. Who if it was remade for today's audience, I guess I'm an old codger at age 30, don't know... Hmm!)